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Raif Badawi: On the efficacy of sharia Astronomy

Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger being given weekly whippings, as an introduction to his ten year sentence, by the oppressive regime it is his misfortune to live under, wrote in praise of the religious scholasticism which characterises islamic science institutions. This from a longer article sampling his writings in the Guardian.

Actually, this venerable preacher has drawn my attention to a truth that had been hidden from me and my dear readers – namely, the existence of the so-called “Sharia astronomer”. What a wonderful appellation! In my humble experience and in the course of my not inconsiderable research into the universe, its origins and the stars, I have never once come across this term. I advise NASA to abandon its telescopes and, instead, turn to our Sharia astronomers, whose keen vision and insight surpass the agency’s obsolete telescopes.

Indeed, I advise all other scholars the world over, of whatever discipline, to abandon their studies, laboratories, research centres, places of experimentation, universities, institutes etc. and head at once to the study groups of our magnificent preachers to learn from them all about modern medicine, engineering, chemistry, microbiology, geology, nuclear physics, the science of the atom, marine sciences, the science of explosives, pharmacology, anthropology etc. – alongside astronomy, of course.

God bless them! They have shown themselves to be the final authority with the decisive word in everything, which all mankind must accept, submit to and obey without hesitation or discussion.

The real tragedy is that western climate science IS religious science, yet we ironically owe Islamic scientists of more enlightened past caliphates for fully half our knowledge of Plato and Aristotle and the classics because they carefully discovered and preserved them after western civilization became mired in the dark ages. Our word “algorithm” comes from the name of an Islamic mathematician I am in no mood to look up right now and a form of calculus was discovered by yet another Islamic scientist.

I sense Raif may hark from this earlier more enlightened tradition. Let us not denigrate Islam as anathema to science. The Pope is equally culpable. The Carbon cult is equally culpable.

Islam has yet to learn the hard lessons of separating church and state. It took the west a millennium of war to learn that. Sort of. When everything is groovy it is easy to find the time for science…

There’s no basis for us Westerners to be scornful. Climate Change Believers are just as dogmatic about their ‘religion’ and just as intolerant of non-believers, though they haven’t found a way to administer literal whippings – yet.

The real tragedy is that western climate science IS religious science,
No such thing as religious science. Do you mean climate science is a religion?

yet we ironically owe Islamic scientists of more enlightened past caliphates for fully half our knowledge of Plato and Aristotle and the classics because they carefully discovered and preserved them
I don’t see why the enlightenment and the industrial revolution needed Plato and Aristotle. It needed Bacon and Newton to show it was not necessary to follow classical writers..

after western civilization became mired in the dark ages.
It was Islam that caused the dark ages.

“… yet we ironically owe Islamic scientists of more enlightened past caliphates for fully half our knowledge of Plato and Aristotle and the classics because they carefully discovered and preserved them.”
‘ don’t see why the enlightenment and the industrial revolution needed Plato and Aristotle. It needed Bacon and Newton to show it was not necessary to follow classical writers..’

Roger Clague is right, Plato and Aristotle were the reason why science was held back for several centuries (one might add Ptolemy’s ‘Almagest’ as well). The doctors of learning clung to their theories in the teeth of evidence (even Descartes did as well – though his maths was useful!). In a sense it was Newton versus Descartes – Newton’s empiracism versus the speculations and ‘models’ of Descartes. Newton won then, but Descartes’ ghost now stalks the computers of the climate speculators once more and is sadly back in fashion. Science is heading back to the Dark Ages – and indeed Sharia will doubtless come to their assistance.

Being Swedish and living in my loved Sweden I’m so sick of Islam! Just saying that here could get me prosecuted by the Swedish government for intolerance to Muslims. But there’s a difference between insulting or mocking Islam and insulting Muslims. Islamophobia is a well constructed ambush. It assumes any skepticism of Islam is racist. That’s like saying socialism is idiotic means liberals are idiots.

More and more our secular and intellectual society is becoming more susceptible to Islam and I fear the sciences will fall victim too since any “offense” to Islam is met with outrage and submission to Muslims by secular leftists.

Yes the Goths did sack Rome, but they kept the system of Government and commerce- it was in their interests.
No it was the continual attacks by Islamic pirates that paralysed shipping in the Med. and ushered in the dark Ages, by reducing Europe to subsistence agriculture.

Durante degli Alighieri, Inferno XXVIII
22 A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
23 Was never shattered so, as I saw one
24 Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
25 Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
26 His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
27 That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
28 While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
29 He looked at me, and opened with his hands
30 His bosom, saying: See now how I rend me;
31 How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
32 In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
33 Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
34 And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
35 Disseminators of scandal and of schism
36 While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
37 A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
38 Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
39 Putting again each one of all this ream,
40 When we have gone around the doleful road;
41 By reason that our wounds are closed again
42 Ere any one in front of him repass.

“we ironically owe Islamic scientists of more enlightened past caliphates for fully half our knowledge of Plato and Aristotle and the classics”

This is a very widespread but completely erroneous belief. If it was true you would expect that a lot of the classics would only be available in arabian translations. This is not so, there is only one or two works for which this is true. In any case the arabs were only interested in works with immediate practical applications like medicine, astronomy, technology etc., definitely not a heathen philosopher like Plato

A Saudi cleric has publicly claimed that the Earth is a static object which is orbited by the sun, adding that centuries of evidence to the contrary is little more than fabrication.

Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari is believed to have been speaking at a university lecture in the United Arab Emirates when a student asked him whether the Earth rotates or is stationary.

The Islamic scholar quickly replies ‘stationary and does not move’, before launching into a long-winded and confusing explanation that appears to the suggest that if the Earth was moving, airliners would never be able to reach their destination.

On concluding his baffling explanation, Sheikh al-Khaibari went on to claim the NASA lunar mission was Hollywood fabrication and that humans have never been to the moon, according to Al Arabiya.